Here it comes, Big Brother fans! With Season 16 of the reality series poised to premiere next week, we're now finally getting some clues about what's ahead. The house has been revealed, and it's for the birds! That's my attempt at tree humor, as the theme of the Big Brother house this season is "Urban treehouse" and based on these glimpses, that's made for some very creative decor. What's more, the memory wall has been made-over in a big way!
THR got the exclusive on these images, giving us a look at the surroundings of this season's crop of Big Brother houseguests. Feed watchers will be staring at these colorful walls for the next few months as the houseguests battle it out for the $500,000 prize all summer. Before we talk about the theme, let's take a look at that memory wall! You can see it in the above photo, shown as two 65" LCD HD screens set side-by-side on the wall near the kitchen. Just for reference, in previous seasons, the memory wall has been changed to match theme of the house, but photos of the houseguests have always been presented in individual frames.
For reference, here's a look at a past season's memory wall:
In the later seasons, the screens showing the houseguests' faces turn black and white when that houseguest is evicted. The wall is used to hold the houseguests' keys, and you'll often see houseguests using it to sort out their competition and memorize faces for the eventual face-morph Veto comp that happens every season. THR says this upgrade to the memory wall is part of Big Brother's efforts to improve their technology. The series is being broadcast in HD for the first time. Production designer Scott Storey says they'll be using these two big screens for the houseguests and also for "different games and moments from the show." That'll be interesting.
And speaking of interesting, let's look at the rooms. Nature is very obviously the main theme here, so one of the bedrooms has a "Fire" theme, while this one below is called the "Earth Bedroom," and has a rock wall that's entirely hand-carved:
Looks like they're aiming for double beds all around here. There's also a "Hive room," which is the lounge room where the houseguests sometimes hang out, not to be confused with the living room...
The above setting is where the houseguests sit during the live show, and it's where the Veto ceremony takes place. Looks like we have two orange chairs for nominations seats this year.
Next up, there's the bathroom, which takes a water theme, complete with bubbled walls and glassy blue color theme...
The house also includes a pretty cool hydroponic garden set above the kitchen, and in the balcony area that overlooks the first floor (outside the Head of Household room), there's a good old-fashioned picnic area for chess-playing...
It certainly is playful!
These photos, added to whatever details Julie Chen reveals on today's episode of The Talk are a fair indication that this season's houseguests have been sequestered, as they usually don't reveal anything specific about the Big Brother season until that happens. Hopefully that means we'll see houseguest profiles soon!
Big Brother premieres with a two-night event starting Wednesday, June 25 at 8:00 p.m. ET on CBS. Live feeds unfortunately don't begin broadcasting until Thursday night.
